


The Legend of the SS Feng-Huang

by cobalamincosel, violetpeche



Category: NCT (Band), 威神V | WayV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Gen, Gen Work, Mentioned WayV Ensemble, Outer Space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:00:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25497223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cobalamincosel/pseuds/cobalamincosel, https://archiveofourown.org/users/violetpeche/pseuds/violetpeche
Summary: The discovery of Nidar was said to have occurred on a strange day for Earth—the day the poles shifted. Kun opened his blinds to a sea of snow outside his window when it should have been summer, and the southern hemisphere went topsy turvy under the scorching sun. Defying the laws of physics, the Earth forced the world into a frenzy for three solid weeks while every astronomer assigned to an observatory began sweeping the skies for an answer.
Comments: 25
Kudos: 38
Collections: NCT Spookfest 2020





	The Legend of the SS Feng-Huang

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the NCT WayV Fleur Zine, a charity zine released in 2020. This is a Kun-centric story inspired by the violet flower.
> 
> Please visit the [Fleur Zine Twitter](https://twitter.com/nctwayv_fleur) to see dozens of other short stories and beautiful fan art inspired by flowers and our favorite boys.

On Earth, Kun was the son of a farmer.

Tucked away into the mountains, surrounded by sprawling green and trees so high they covered the sky above him. On the days he made it out of the forest, he loved to spend hours flat on his back and look up at the sky—to watch the birds flit between clearings, hunting for prey, and the airplanes that would seldom cross overhead. 

He always stared, wondering what life looked like from above. How would it feel to see the blanket of evergreen firs and pines—an ancient forest grown tall, grand, majestic—look smaller than the size of his hand?

As he grew older, his childhood aspirations exceeded the atmosphere, and he overshot into discovering a world outside the world. Sure, he trained for years to be a commercial air pilot, but over time, he grew hungry to break through and breach the final frontier. 

He went from just plain Qian Kun from Fujian to Commander Qian of the _SS Feng-Huang_. He was assigned to oversee the mission of a lifetime—to lead his crew, and the pride of his nation, to make the first human contact on Nidar, a planet in a galaxy far, far away.

The discovery of Nidar was said to have occurred on a strange day for Earth—the day the poles shifted. Kun opened his blinds to a sea of snow outside his window when it should have been summer, and the southern hemisphere went topsy turvy under the scorching sun. Defying the laws of physics, the Earth forced the world into a frenzy for three solid weeks while every astronomer assigned to an observatory began sweeping the skies for an answer. 

Kun was training to lead a simple mission to the moon—he had already completed four missions to repair satellites that orbited the Earth, and assisted two trips to the moon under Commander Zhang—but this unprecedented, scientifically impossible discovery of a rift in the universe had the agency shifting gears in their preparations.

“You were made for this,” Commander Zhang said firmly. Kun could hardly believe it; the same astronaut that had led a successful mission to Mars, both of its moons, and three solo missions to the Earth’s moon sat across from him and assured Kun that he was fit to lead a mission through a _wormhole_.

He wasn’t quite sure he was ready—he hadn’t even completed his mission as Commander Qian to the moon—but he only sat up straighter and listened to what the esteemed commander had to say. 

“Listen—this is what you and I live for, Kun,” he started. Gravity had been kind to the commander, and the natural lines of happiness started to carve into the corners of his eyes and around his smile. He licked his lips and steepled his fingers before he continued. “When I was a little boy, I wanted to go to space to explore the unknown. And I have—I’ve found out Mars isn’t nearly as nice as the movies make it out to be.”

Kun snorted under his breath to appease the commander for his joke.

The commander let out a small laugh of his own and continued: “But Mars is not entirely unknown. It’s a planet that has been there, in our solar system, for billions of years. When we were born, Mars was known before us, and when we die, Mars will be known to those after us.”

The commander opened his hands and licked the tip of his finger to turn over a page from the manila file flayed open before him.

“Nidar, on the other hand, is entirely new. Does that not excite you?”

Kun nodded to acknowledge the commander’s words. It did—it excited Kun as much as it terrified him to not only be alive to witness the discovery of a new planet but an entirely new galaxy through a wormhole. It was straight out of a dream. He couldn’t help folding his hands into his lap nervously as he tried to process this new reality. 

“You are the best hope for the future of humanity. When you were my pilot on my last two trips to the moon, I knew you would be destined for great things. Sure, we might have thrown a few wrenches around, but what I saw in you then burns three times stronger now. You have been training with your crew to take on the moon, but the universe has presented you with a new destiny.”

“Commander—could I ask why you aren’t leading this mission?”

It made the most sense to have a seasoned pilot lead a crew to an untouched planet. And yet, the other part of Kun refused to consider that _because_ he was still a fresh member of the space crew at the agency, if there was anyone to lose, it would be to the less experienced.

“See,” the commander started, “they did ask me, but I haven’t trained with a crew in the last three years. You, however, are much younger, full of vitality, and have a hunger to explore. You are a natural-born leader. This will be the most challenging mission of a lifetime, and I think your strength in leading your crew will be the reason for its success.”

With the endorsement of the honorable Commander Zhang, Kun rolled up his sleeves and accepted his fate.

__________

The mission to reach Nidar was estimated to be at least three years and seventy days, according to the calculations presented by the astronomers back on Earth. And that was just to the edge of the wormhole. Beyond that, they couldn’t predict how much further it would take for them to reach Nidar, but they estimated at least another three years.

And that was just on the way _there_.

Just two hundred thirty-nine days into the mission, there was a mechanical issue that required the ship to be stabilized while the flight engineers, Dejun and Guanheng, sorted out the problem for the next seven days. 

Five hundred days aboard the _Feng-Huang_ they discovered they were off course—by an entire light year. The discovery was made by Ten, which caused tension between him and Sicheng for not paying attention to the coordinates while operating the controls for the ship. Kun had to mediate the situation before it escalated further.

Seven hundred eighty-two days into the mission, there was another major mechanical hiccup, and Kun started to feel the weight of their task. At this point in their journey, they were too far into space to turn around. Even then, could they ever return to Earth? 

About two light-years prior, their signals became too far out to ping any messages back to the station. As far as they knew, the agency took a gamble to launch _Feng-Huang_. Kun knew that _they knew_ there was a chance of never seeing the ship return to Earth ever again. 

It was a great burden to consider that the success of his crew finding Nidar was built on blind faith. When things would go wrong, Kun found it harder to keep the faith of his crew elevated. As they grew tired and listless, bodies yearning for organic sunlight, it was Kun who couldn’t succumb to his emotions.

He would never let them down. Not after how far they had come.

__________

“Approaching Nidar,” the voice on the intercom said. “Course set. Arrival in T-minus 7 hours.” 

_Course set_. Kun exhaled, allowing his body to press into the soft leather of the commander’s seat for the first time in what felt like years, the gravity stabilizers on the ship giving him the equilibrium he needed to right his head again. 

His hands were still shaking from the asteroid belt he’d had to guide the craft through, but between Yangyang’s jovial whoop and Sicheng’s irritating “nice one, cap,” after the shaking had stopped and the alarm systems had shut down, Kun figured he’d done an okay enough job getting them to safety. A landmass was detected and now they were finally, _finally_ on a clear course to Nidar. Nothing else in the way. He could breathe for the next 7 hours, and then they would be able to get on land again after years of travel. 

Time moved differently in space; it wasn’t slow or fast, but rather it was present. Time was a construct, a concept his life on Earth depended on by a life cycle aligned with the sun and moon. He’d been prepared to see time differently coming onto this mission. Training had simulated it as best as possible, but there really was no way to prepare anyone on the _Feng-Huang_ fully for the passage of time in a spacecraft, on what had been, so far, an arduous journey. Out here, experiencing life was beyond time itself.

Kun checked the control panel to ensure nothing was amiss. Oxygen levels were still good at ninety-seven percent, and they had several backups in case the current one should run out. Cabin pressure was normalized. The ship was asleep. Kun could breathe at last. 

He unbuckled himself and rose from the commander’s seat, wincing at every crack in his knees and vertebrae from the movement. He allowed himself to stretch his neck side to side, running his hand over the taut muscle of his trapezius. Back on Earth, he’d never understood the appeal of massages. It figured that it took something like intergalactic space travel for Kun to start missing the little things. 

The craft cruised on its own, jetting along without Kun being able to feel their journey beneath his feet. There was silence from the cabins, which meant that the rest of his crew probably had knocked out after the stress of the asteroid belt.

A rumble from his stomach made Kun think twice about just crashing, and it was then that he realized that he hadn’t had anything to eat in the last twelve hours—hardly ideal given that he was expected to be prepared for anything. Sighing, he unzipped his insulated jacket, puffy in the parts under his fingers before hanging it on the back of the commander chair. 

The kitchen was in the lower deck, separated from the flight deck by a short flight of stairs. Kun hadn’t realized how little he had been able to walk around during the tension of the last couple of hours, and his thighs were starting to ache from the atrophy of being in space. He really needed to get back to training if he didn’t want to waste away from all the artificial gravity and lack of natural sunlight even after landing. 

The dining area was filled with yellow light, supposedly to mimic being back on Earth, though Kun never really felt the connection. He appreciated the attempt nonetheless and smiled to himself as he pulled out a packet of irradiated meat and placed it in the Ohmic heater, set to the actual meat setting. 

A clang from the greenhouse and an excited “No fucking way!” snapped Kun out of his reverie. He looked up from the heater and into the adjoining room where they housed their dwarf wheat and greenery. 

“Xuxi?” Kun called out to their astrobotanist, who yelled back gleefully, “Hey chief! I’m in here!” 

Kun set his utensils back on the magnetic pad to hold them in place and made his way into the greenhouse.

In all their time on this ship, Kun had not once had a chance to enjoy the slice of nature that they had on here. This was Xuxi's domain—the one who tended to all the vegetables that they’d managed to grow and maintain with aquaponics, a small self-sustaining ecosystem that allowed for the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide, the generation and filtration of clean, potable water. It was incredible. This was the ship’s true heart, and Xuxi was the one who kept it alive. 

When he entered, he spotted a tuft of black hair. The rest of Xuxi was hunched over something out of Kun’s field of vision. 

“Hey, Kun-ge,” Xuxi said. Kun decided to brush off the fact that once again, none of his crew members had referred to him by his official title for the last two years aboard the ship. He hardly had time to think about how much this mission had relaxed so many parts of themselves when Xuxi straightened up and moved aside to let Kun in on his secret. 

Kun’s breath caught in his throat. 

Amid the white fluorescent light overhead, the sterile silver of their ship’s interiors, and the green-yellow of the dwarf wheat behind it, stood a beautiful flower, dainty and resilient, its yellow center surrounded by a dark blue that bled into soft lavender-colored petals. 

“Isn’t she pretty?” Xuxi asked. Kun looked over to him, broad shoulders bunched up to his ears with excitement. “I’d almost given up on it. It hadn’t bloomed all this time and now—well.” 

Kun didn’t know much about flowers even though he had been surrounded by nature growing up. He’d spent so much time in the forests, then subsequently holed up in his room studying, that he’d never really had a chance to sit and listen to his mother tend to the small flower garden they’d grown at home. He wishes now that he had. 

“What is it?” Kun asked, peering in closer to look at the lone, blue blossom standing proudly on its stem.

“A violet,” Xuxi replied with wonder in his voice. Kun had always liked that about Xuxi, that Xuxi genuinely cared for everything that he was responsible for—his crew, his plants. “I wanted to see which flowers would bloom in conditions like this. So far none have taken except for this one.” 

Kun sat down on the small white bench that was positioned in front of this shelf of greenery, eyes fixed on the blossom. 

“They’re amazing, resilient little things, violets,” Xuxi said, taking a small spray bottle, dwarfed in his hand, and spritzing the flower gently twice. “They’re supposed to symbolize wisdom, but what they’re known for is their ability to bloom twice a year. Some strains are capable of self-pollinating and come once in the spring, and then again in summer.”

Xuxi took a clean white cloth to the petals, wiping them with a care that Kun had only ever seen afforded to things like Xuxi's dog Bella and his niece back in Hong Kong. 

“It reminds me of you actually, Commander,” Xuxi said brightly, nodding toward the violet. His smile radiated in the white light. 

Kun glanced up with a frown. 

“What?” Kun asked, confused by the statement. Kun wasn’t delicate. Or at least he had never once felt like he was. 

“You were really something to be reckoned with in the academy,” Xuxi replied, tossing the cloth to the side. “Even when you were still a pilot. And then when they asked you to be a commander, things got tougher, but so did you. And I know this wasn’t the mission you were planning on taking, if ever, but you guided us through galaxies, asteroid belts, and a _wormhole!_ ” 

Xuxi let out a hearty laugh and looked back over to Kun with a big smile. “You did it all like you’d been born for it. Full of strength, graceful, against all odds.” Xuxi pointed to the small, blue blossom. “Just like a violet.”

__________

The galaxy in which Nidar resided orbited around, like Earth, one sun, and yet Nidar had three moons. It appeared to be three times the size of Earth and had virtually four times the landmass. Her beauty took Kun’s breath away as he soaked in the vibrant swaths of greens, blues, and browns covering her surface. 

After spending two days in the flight deck with Sicheng orbiting around the planet, they ran tests to seek out potentially safe areas to land. Guanheng ran additional clearance with Ten and Xuxi to measure any additional safety precautions to clear for landing. Once all data was gathered, Kun proposed they wait another day or two before landing on Nidar.

When he left the flight deck and walked back toward the kitchen for a small bite, Guanheng stepped out of his room and asked, “How’re you feeling, Commander Qian?” 

Kun couldn’t decipher the exact emotions he was feeling—especially after seven years of traveling through space abroad the _Feng-Huang_. With their combined strength and patience, the crew had accomplished the impossible.

Kun kept marching toward the kitchen with Guanheng in tow. “A lot,” Kun admitted. He couldn’t exactly parse out his emotions entirely at that moment: was he _excited? Scared? Anxious? Relieved?_

He looked down at the row of yellow lights that lined the corridor. His body suddenly reminded him how much he had craved natural sunlight again.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a shock of blue. He paused right outside of Xuxi's lab to peer at the lone violet Xuxi had shown to him just two days ago. Except for this time, it was not just one flower, but a cluster of them now, all standing, proud, in their glorious rebirth.

**Author's Note:**

>  **From a:** Thank you so much for reading! It was a huge pleasure taking part of this marvelous project. I have to thank Mon for helping me craft this small universe. I really wanted to pour a lot of love into a piece written about Kun, so badly that it started to freak me out! Mon came to the rescue, and we managed to live up to my expectations. This truly wouldn't have gotten done without her collaboration.
> 
> Thank you to [Anne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/speckledsolanaceae%20rel=) for combing through this for those glaring spelling errors. Your watchful eye is a gift!
> 
> Another thank you to n_ikuman for a brief background on the Chinese space program and for helping us name the SS Feng-Huang!
> 
> Finally, thank you so our dear Fleur Zine organizers. We're deeply cherish every aspect of this project. It's an honor to be alongside some fantastic creatives I truly admire.
> 
> .
> 
> **From m:** I had never expected to come on board on this project, but it was an honour, truly, to be Any’s First Mate. Writing with her is always such a joy, and this fever-dream story was one that just flowed between us easily. I’m so very grateful to her, and to the powers that be that made our synergy work so well that day, and all days. 
> 
> Thank you to the Fleur Zine Organisers for putting this project together and for being so accommodating of my last-minute involvement in the zine!
> 
> _____________
> 
> You can talk to violetpeche here: [twitter](https://twitter.com/johntographique) | [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/violetpeche)
> 
> And cobalamincosel here: [twitter](https://twitter.com/johnnyseo_paws) | [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/johnnyseo_paws)


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